


The Place Where I Love You

by Covenmouse



Series: The Lion's Roar [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 05:22:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20222491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Covenmouse/pseuds/Covenmouse
Summary: Over the past several months Byleth has grown used to ignoring her instincts. She listens, instead of reacting. She waits, instead of charging forward. Jeralt encouraged this change; ultimately to his own detriment. But it wasn't always like this, and Byleth is beginning to understand that sometimes, in some situation, instinct serves better than logic or reason.





	The Place Where I Love You

**Author's Note:**

> MAJOR THINGS TO NOTE: I have not yet finished the game (I think i'm getting close, though. I'm deep into part two on a Blue Lions route.) I have also rejected some of canon and inserted my own, primarily surrounding Byleth's lack of emotions and her relationship with Jeralt. This is a follow up to my other FE3H fic, Growing Pains. You may want to read that first. (Can you link notes? idk)
> 
> Alsoooooo, um, this is sort of a song fic? Yes, I know, it's campy. I'll say more about it at the end, but I swear I had a point for doing this.

Byleth opens her eyes and reaches her hand across the bed for—there is nothing there. Empty mattress. Cold sheets. The leather and hard soap scent clinging to the bedding is lighter this morning than it was last night. It’s already begun to fade. Still, it was enough to trick her into believing that maybe—_maybe _— 

With all the crying she’s done these past few hours, she thought surely she must be spent. All the moisture has been leached from her body. 

But the golden light streaming through the window of her father’s barracks room catches on his hauberk, removed and cleaned and left on the room’s small working table. The hauberk with a neat, clean cut where that girl’s dagger slid through the mail like butter.

It should have taken more, Byleth thinks; not for the first time. How many wounds had he received over the years? Enough that Byleth knew basic stitching and poultices. Enough to keep him alive until the proper healers could take over. 

Over and over the scene repeats in her mind.

That _ girl _ come up from the ruins of the chapel like it was just another day; just another childish spot of trouble. It hadn’t been, of course. And her father—her suspicious, no-nonsense father—who should have seen right away that there was something capital-letter Wrong about the situation, was letting the girl walk away. 

Only, the girl didn’t walk away. She danced around his back and—and—

“Some mistakes are meant to be made,” whispers Sothis. 

Byleth snatches the pillow from under her own head, flinging it at Sothis’ head. 

It sails through the green-haired apparition, rattling the table and sending the hauberk to the floor.

The girl frowns, her voice turning haughty and cross. “You are upset, so I shall ignore your assault. I was only attempting to help.”

“And you think that helps? We could have saved him!”

“We tried.”

They had tried. Once. But they _ had _ tried. Sothis’ strange power warped the world around Byleth; the flow tugging at her soul like sap around an insect. She watched the dagger leave her father’s back, the girl twirl backwards back around him. 

Time snapped into place again. Byleth drew the crescent soul blade. She would have hit the girl directly between the eyes, but then the sorcerer was there—deflecting her attack like it was nothing. 

They could have tried again. Tried something _ else _. 

Voice soft again, Sothis asks, “What else? Any attack we made, that man would have come.”

Byleth struggles for an answer; something they _ truly _ could have done to avoid that. There is only one answer, though. Unfortunately, it was a mistake too far in the past to rectify.

“We knew she wasn’t right,” Byleth mutters. She scrubs her palms roughly against her aching, wet cheeks. Her eyes are gritty and swollen. This is exactly why she never cried before, and why she never wants to again.

“You say that, but…”

“But what?” Spurred by impotent rage, Byleth finally sits up enough to glare at Sothis. “But _ what _? There was no way that girl was down there for an entire year. That’s absurd! Rhea had to know there was something wrong with Monica, and she let the girl stay, regardless.”

“And what else was there to do?” Sothis shakes her head. “I am not defending Rhea’s actions, but not even she could justify locking away a girl who had, by all accounts, been held captive for a year and submitted to who-knows-what. There would have been rebellion.”

Byleth doesn’t know what to say. No matter how much she wants to deny it, Sothis is right. If Rhea had tried to keep Monica locked away even her own supporters would have begun questioning her—maybe not the most fanatical among them, sure, but enough to be troublesome. 

Allowing Monica to rejoin the Officer’s Academy gave them a way to keep an eye on her. But—

More tears. 

Byleth draws her knees up to her nose, and clings to herself. The sobs are wretched and wracking, and they annoy even her. Who is this wreck of a woman? She doesn’t recognize herself in this. But she can’t stop. She can’t. 

The bed does not shift when Sothis sits beside her. The girl isn’t really there. Is she a ghost? No. But neither is she alive in the same sense as Byleth. 

Still, when Sothis projects her image upon the world, it is almost a relief. But only almost, because her image is always subtly _ wrong _. Light and shadow do not interact with her the way they should, nor is she able to interact with objects. Or people. 

The image of Sothis leans against Byleth’s side, her cheek resting upon Byleth’s shoulder, and if she lacks the pressure that would come with real flesh, there is still a sense of warmth and familiarity to the gesture. 

“Let it come,” the girls whispers in her strange, old-young way. “You have covered it too long, I fear. All wounds must air eventually.”

So Byleth does.

#

The acrid stench of smouldering rubble and flesh is the first thing to register when she wakes. She leaps to her feet, stumbles, falls upon shaking knees and scraped hands. 

Bile pours from her lips, bathing the dark ash that coats the ground like snowfall. When she has hacked her lungs clear, through her eyes and nose still stream with poison, the girl looks up at a senseless world.

Everything is deathly quiet. Corpses lie strewn on the ground; many scorched by flame, or crushed by felled trees and caved houses. A pair of legs protrude from the rubble not too far away. The toes twitch, but their owner is no longer alive. She understands that much.

The girl rises to her feet again, slowly this time, and with care not to fall. She retrieves a stick of metal from the ground—a sword. _ Her _ sword.

With trembling fingers she wipes the tacky blood and dirt from the blade as best she can, then slides it safely into the scabbard at her hip. 

She takes first one halting step, then a second, then a third. She wanders slowly through the destruction, avoiding beds of embers and bodies alike. There is something she is looking for, but she can’t remember… 

The voice, when first she hears it, is rough with smoke and emotion. She doesn’t know the word he said. It means nothing. Perhaps he is speaking another language?

Turning, the girl finds a collection of men running toward her. For a moment she is afraid, and her hand goes automatically to the hilt of her sword. Then she sees their leader’s face and halts. 

She does not know this man. But she does, doesn’t she? He is tall and broad, with sun-coloured hair and worry in his eyes. Was she looking for _ him _? He does seem to know her.

The man drops to a knee in front of her, grasping her shoulders. 

“What happened? Where were you? Goddess, you’re covered in blood.” 

The girl looks down at herself, then, and realizes he is correct; she is covered in dark, sticky blood. She’s pretty sure it’s hers, too, but she doesn’t feel any pain. Odd.

His hands search her roughly, looking for the wound. Finding nothing, he turns her about and hisses abruptly. 

Pain blossoms when his fingers brush the back of her head. The girl jerks out of his grasp, stumbling about to face him again. 

“Sorry! Sorry,” the man says. “That doesn’t look good, honey. We need to get you to a healer.”

He reaches for her again. She allows him to touch her, but she’s gone rigid; still as a cornered wolf. Finally, he realizes something is wrong—more wrong than the blood glueing her shaggy dark hair to her neck, adding to the ruins of the roughspun shirt and trews she wears beneath training leathers. It’s something about the way she’s looking at him, like she’s never seen him before in her life.

He says that word again—the one which has no meaning for her. He says this in a way the girl knows is supposed to make sense. But even if she knew how to explain, the words die long before they reach her lips. It’s as though someone has severed the connection between her mouth and brain, just as surely as they’ve excised all context from her world. 

So she communicates the only way she’s able: she stares, and mutely shakes her head. 

“Jeralt.” One of the other men steps forward. He carries a charred pitchfork, and wears nothing but ruined farmer’s clothing. The other three who followed him wear much the same. Later, Jeralt will tell her these men were mercenaries, and she will understand he lied. 

“Jeralt, the others—”

“Yes. Sorry. Come on, sweetheart. We’ll get you a healer as soon as we can.”

He takes her by the hand, leading her after him into the smouldering village.

Though she has no reason to trust him, the girl follows without complaint or hesitation. Instinct tells her she can trust this man, and so she does. Instinct is the only direction she has left. 

#

As the day wears on there are a few knocks on the door. Byleth answers none of them. 

She pulls herself together by bits and pieces, until the sky outside is purple with dusk. When she finally exits the barracks, the monastery is silent and the pathways mostly empty. Between the fading light and the relative lack of people, Byleth feels safe enough to venture to the graveyard.

It’s been a long time since she’s lost someone she cared about this deeply. 

No, Byleth corrects herself. She’s never lost someone she cares about _ this _ deeply. A few came close. None of them left her shaking and weeping. None of them hollowed her out so completely she felt like that lost little girl again, with a head full of knowledge but devoid of identity. 

The graveyard is empty. It’s easy to see why, once Byleth has trudged down the steps and over to the defaced gravestone Jeralt swore was her mother’s. A space has been dug up next to it, the perfect size and depth for a ceremonial urn. It’s empty, though. 

“They haven’t cremated him, yet,” says a tired, ruined voice from behind her. “They’re holding a vigil in the cathedral, first.”

Byleth doesn’t move as Leonie’s footsteps approach from behind. 

“You’re out here,” Byleth remarks. The words sound nonsensical once they hit the air, but she can’t say more than that. Words are easier with Sothis, who knows her so completely. They were easiest with Jeralt, but he’s gone. Byleth doesn’t know if words are ever going to be easy again. That’s almost as unnerving as the idea of burying him in this place that they hated.

To her surprise, Leonie seems to understand; her words, anyway. She doubts the girl would believe that Jeralt felt anything but happy in the monastery. 

“There were too many people. I couldn’t take it.”

“How long are they…” Her sentence trails. The words abandon her again. 

“The vigil lasts all night. Most will probably clear out before midnight, though.”

Byleth feels the girl’s gaze like a weight. She doesn’t want to look at Leonie, but she wants even less to remain staring at the hole where her father will be laid. So she turns her head, forces her eyes up.

They are not close, she and this girl who claims to have been her father’s apprentice. Leonie is too jealous of Byleth. Byleth is too annoyed by Leonie’s presumptions. 

And none of that matters today. Not when Leonie’s eyes are nearly as red as Byleth’s own; her face just as peaked and swollen. They stare at each other for a long time, with a cold breeze rattling between them like a death’s knell, and wonder that the other cared so much. 

“Let’s wait here for a while longer,” Leonie says for both of them, “Then I’ll go in with you, if you want.”

Byleth nods. When Leonie’s hand finds its way to hers, Byleth clings to the human connection like a life raft. To her credit, Leonie doesn’t complain. She squeezes just as tightly as Byleth when the bells begin to ring, and neither woman lets go.

#

“Please, sweetheart, talk to me. You’ve got to try.”

The girl stares him; this man who claims to be her father. They look nothing alike. He’s blonde and sun-kissed, with deep, dark eyes that hold all the weight of the world within their depths. 

Thanks to a dingy old mirror in the hedge witch’s shop, the girl now knows that her skin is pale as milk all over; nearly lifeless. Her eyes are big pools of blue like an empty summer sky, and her hair is an odd black that borders on a dark cyan in the sunlight. 

Even the witch seemed skeptical when he brought her in. Sometime between Jeralt’s whispered explanations, the witch’s examination, and his careful treatment of the girl, the woman had relaxed. 

“Head wounds tend to bleed profusely. Even small ones look a lot scarier than they are serious,” she told Jeralt when she’d taken the measure of Byleth’s injury. “How long did you say it’s been?”

“Ten days. I kept her awake the first full day. She doesn’t seem to have trouble focusing, though, so I let her sleep after that. Seemed okay enough. She just won’t…”

“Sometimes, after a major shock, kids have a tendency to withdraw a bit.”

Jeralt pressed his lips into a tight line. The look on his face said that he knew this, and didn’t believe it explained anything. But all he said was, “So you think she’ll be alright?”

“Physically, sure. The rest… Just give her time.”

Jeralt paid the woman, and they left, hand in hand. When they reached the crossroads, Byleth expected him to turn back toward the ruined village they’d begun in. The people there were expecting them to return, or so the girl believed.

Instead, Jeralt went the opposite direction. She wanted to ask why. She wanted to know if he was lost, or if he was seeking out another healer. But she didn’t. The girl’s mouth has not opened in two days, except for food and drink. She has begun to believe it never will again.

That night, after they have made camp—the girl remembers tents and knots and fishing line—Jeralt kneels before her and asks her to try. 

“I can’t—” his voice hitches, and his eyes are alarmingly bright. He ducks his head to avoid her soul-piercing gaze. “Please. I can’t do this again.”

Again? Though she doesn’t have the slightest idea what he means, the girl’s own breath hitches at the sudden realization that he is crying. This man who has been so kind to her is crying, and it’s her fault. 

She steps forward, hesitant at first, but with growing conviction she wraps her arms around his shoulders. 

Slowly, his arms come around her in turn. They are strong, kind arms. She feels safe inside of them, and she hopes he feels safe in hers, too. Even if she doesn’t know who he is, really. The girls wants him to be her father, she decides. So he is. That part is simple.

Dredging up memories is another matter. The part of her mind where history and self ought to be is devoid of everything except the present and these past few days. She’s already become accustomed to their absence. 

But standing there, with her father’s tears soaking into her shirt, the girl decides she could try a little harder to speak. It’s clear he needs that much. He’s been so good to her, how can she refuse?

So she strokes the thin ponytail trailing down his back and tries to say something; anything. 

What is there to say? What could make anything better? 

Should she tell him that she doesn’t know him? That she doesn’t know any of the people who so clearly knew her? She doesn’t understand how she knows the use of a sword, or the gestures to summon fire. She doesn’t remember the blow that took her away from him.

But just as she’s ready to give up, something does break through; like fate, like nature, like instinct. A tenuous, threadbear hum resonates in her throat. The melody is spoty, and her voice—when it comes—is harsh from lack of use. 

Jeralt startles. His tears dry, but he doesn’t move from her grasp until she’s sung a full verse. Then his wide, brown eyes meet her own. 

“Where did you hear that song?” he asks. 

The girl doesn’t know. She shrugs, after it becomes clear her voice has dried up again. He no longer needs it, so it went away. 

“You don’t remember?”

She shakes her head, doing her best to look contrite. 

He thinks about this for several moments before asking, “Do you remember me?”

Again, she shakes her head. 

Jeralt takes a shaky breath. “But you remembered that song.”

She shrugs, then tilts her head to one side as she struggles to ask what he knows about it. 

“It’s—it was a lullaby. One your mother taught me. I… used to sing it to you, a long time ago. I didn’t think…”

Hope, pure and wonderful, surges through her. If she recalled the song, perhaps her memories are not as lost as she believed. For the first time in days, she smiles—_ no _ —she _ beams _ at him. And Jeralt, with more unshed tears in his eyes, smiles back.

“And here I was thinking I’d lost you. Don’t you go scaring me like that again, girl. I can’t lose you, too.”

The girl places her hand over her heart, making him the most solemn promise she can manage.

#

By unspoken agreement, they wait until midnight to cross the bridge into the cathedral. 

A table has been erected directly at the center of the prayer grounds in front of the altar; draped in white cloth and scattered with flower petals. Jeralt’s corpse lies upon it. Byleth knows the shape of him, even at this distance. But she is frozen, standing hand-in-hand with Leonie, as they each take in the number of people in the hall. 

Many of the knights are present, kneeling with their hands upon the hilts of their swords. Their heads are bowed, eyes closed. Praying.

They could be sleeping, Byleth figures. She’s seen mercenaries sleep in stranger positions, when they need arose. Somehow, though, she doesn’t believe that. 

Besides, the Company is also here. It’s startling, seeing them in this place. Excepting for Luca, Jeralt’s second-in-command, most of the Company has avoided the monastery proper. They rarely ventured past the small town at the base of the mountain. When she’d asked, one of them said they didn’t feel welcome. Byleth understood that all too well. 

But here they are, sitting in the back pews as far from the knights as possible, talking quietly amongst themselves. It’s unsettling and _ wrong _. 

Deaths are supposed to be celebrated with music, and laughter, and booze, and the people who knew the dead best. They should be in a tavern, making trouble and celebrating the good times. 

Luca should be making toasts with lewd jokes about the time he and the Captain got caught, pants around their ankles, by an enemy patrol, but somehow made it out alive. 

Grizzle and Mange, the Company’s Quartermaster and cook, respectively, ought to be belting out that off-color ballad they wrote that made Jeralt blush scarlet. 

There should be recitations of old jokes, and tall-tales, and blowing Jeralt’s battlefield prowess completely out of proportion. And then someone—Byleth, traditionally, as his closest relative, though Luca could probably make a pass at it—was supposed to get piss drunk and rage at the corpse for at least an hour.

That was a vigil. That was a wake. This—Byleth doesn’t know what this is.

Leonie yelps as Byleth pulls her, uncaring and unheeding, down the central aisle toward the body. 

Rhea, standing opposite Jeralt, looks up in shock at Byleth’s appearance. 

“Professor?”

Distantly, Byleth is aware that alongside the knights, several of the staff members are present, as well as students from her own house. She doesn’t care. 

“What is this?”

The words are too loud, and the cathedral is too good at it’s job: her words carry easily to every person in the space. 

“A vigil.” Rhea’s voice is candy sweet, as always. Her expression is kind, even; if somewhat confused. “I know you aren’t familiar with the church, but surely you hold vigils over your dead?”

Her pale eyes glance over Byleth’s shoulder. Footsteps behind her; slight limp on the right. Luca. He followed her.

“Not like this.” It’s a struggle to keep her voice neutral. She wants to scream at the woman’s presumption, but seeing Jeralt on the table before her has awoken h is voice inside her head.

_ Be careful, Bye _ , Jeralt would say. _ Nobles don’t take kind to our ways. _

“Oh?” Again, Rhea’s eyes flick to Luca.

“It’s not really the sort of place for our ways, kid,” says the man himself. Though she doesn’t quite want to, Byleth turns to face him. 

Luca DiAngela is a tall, thin man with more power in his frame than one would guess from the look of him. Outside of battle, he’s the sort to keep himself prim and polished to a degree. Not now. He is tired, and red-eyed, and he needs to shave the dark stubble spreading in uneven patches along his jaw. 

But his smile is warm, if sad. Unlike the rest of the Company, he has no fear of Byleth. He shows this, now, by tracing her hair back behind her ear, the better to look at her face. 

“Damn. When you finally break down, you don’t hold back, do you, kid? Look at this mess…”

To her own shock, Byleth splutters out a resounding laugh. Leonie stares at her like she’s gone mad for a second before she, too, begins to smile. 

Luca grins. “There you go. That feels a lot better, yeah?”

Still laughing in airy fits and starts, Byleth nods. Her eyes are beginning to brim again, but she manages to blink it away before she notices Luca is doing the same. 

“Thank you,” Byleth manages to say. “Thank you all for coming. Especially on—how did you even find out?”

Before Luca can answer, Rhea replies, “Jeralt meant quite a lot to all of us. This was the least we could do.”

It’s like a bucket of ice water in her face. Byleth flinches; actively, visibly. She has no mask to shield the impulse. She schools her experssion quickly, but it’s too late. Leonie is giving her another strange look, and Luca’s smile is frozen in concern. 

But Rhea looks as unphased as ever. 

Was it possible the woman hadn’t realized just how terrible her assumption was? Or…

This time, the warning comes from Sothis, “Do you not know bait when it is dangled in front of you?”

Yes. That was right, Byleth thinks. That comment was bait, and she is dangerously close to finding herself hooked on Rhea’s line. 

“The cathedral is lovely. I didn’t expect so many to turn out.”

Is it her imagination, or does Rhea look disappointed? The woman’s smile is pleasant enough as she dips her head in polite acknowledgement. 

“The Archbishop was kind enough to let us join. We were waiting for you,” Luca puts in. 

Rhea’s cool gaze slides to him. “Think nothing of it. The Cathedral is open to the public, after all. We encourage all believers to attend frequently.”

“Afraid the Captain kept us too busy for that,” Luca says. Byleth doesn’t think he’s faking the sudden rasp in his voice. “But we should be getting on our way. Byleth…”

He struggles to find some words, and it takes Byleth an abysmally long time to realize what he’s trying to ask. 

“I’ll walk you out,” she says, then looks at Leonie. Their hands are still attached, and Byleth doesn’t want to let go. “Have, ah, have you two met?”

“You’re—you _ were _ Jeralt’s second, right?” Leonie sounds hopeful. Like Byleth, she hasn’t been able to look at the corpse this entire conversation. It isn’t a stretch to guess that she’s just as uncomfortable with this as Byleth is, though the reasons aren’t clear. They don’t need to be.

“I still feel like I am,” says Luca in a quiet voice. “Want to come with us? Maybe we can all catch up.”

“You don’t wish to say goodbye?” Rhea asks. When Byleth looks back to the woman, she finds herself torn. Rhea looks genuinely upset at the idea of Byleth leaving. Maybe that’s even real.

It’s true this vigil is nothing like the wake Jeralt would have wanted. But then, he’d told her a few times how such things aren’t really for the dead; they’re for the living. 

And maybe these people, who had waited with him so long, in their own way, had been waiting for her just as much as the Company clearly had. Maybe she was being cruel, throwing their efforts away. 

She has to look. Byleth doesn’t want to look, but she has to. 

Taking a final step toward the table, Byleth brushes against the edge of it and finally looks upon the face of her father. He looks like he could be sleeping.

It’s strange, actually. People always say that about the dead, but Byleth has never before seen a corpse that actually looks that way. Perhaps the church has access to some sort of magic that makes him look that way. 

Byleth hates it. She hates the idea that he might come back to her, because she knows he won’t. 

“How do I do that? Your way, I mean.”

“_ Our _ way?” Rhea sounds confused, but the question sounds rhetorical as she goes on, “Usually the relatives say something about the deceased. But you don’t have to, if you’d rather not.”

Say something? Like a speech. Speeches are given at wakes. Maybe, just maybe, their ways aren’t so different after all. 

Not that Byleth would have ever tried to give a speech. She could barely manage a lecture, most days. Lectures weren’t concerned with her feelings or personal thoughts or memories best left unshared.

Byleth reaches her free hand out to touch her father’s chest. It is cold and unmoving. He isn’t asleep. She pulls her fingers back, suddenly preferring the illusion she hated only a moment ago. The idea that he’s only sleeping, and therefore, he might come back if he only tried hard enough.

And she remembers, then, how he’d begged her to come back to him, once. It wasn’t quite the same. After all, she wasn’t dead just… gone. A part of her _ had _ left him, and that must have felt so similar. 

It’s too perfect for her to balk, this idea. Even with the crowd, and all these strange people, and their strange ways. There was one thing she’d managed to hold on to for Jeralt, of that first girl he raised. One thing she’d retained through everything. He should get to hear it one last time.

She starts to take his hand again, and stops herself. Instead, she rests her hand upon the table with her fingertips barely brushing his as she begins to sing.

_ “Deep in the meadow, under the willow. _  
_ A bed of grass, a soft green pillow. _  
_ Lay down your head, and close your eyes. _  
_ And when they open, the sun will rise. _  
_ Here it's safe, and here it's warm. _  
_ Here the daisies guard you from every harm. _  
_ Here your dreams are sweet, and tomorrow brings them true. _ _  
_Here is the place where I love you.”

Her voice is not terribly good. She’s hoarse from crying, and she’s never practiced much, but when Byleth finally looks up she finds she’s not the only one wiping stray tears from their eyes. 

Even Rhea is looking bright eyed. She’s also smiling. “Where… did you hear that song?”

“Daddy used to sing it to me,” Byleth says, unthinking. It’s only when Leonie’s eyebrows raise does she realize that she’s never called him anything, except possibly ‘father,’ in front of these people. 

“He did?” Rhea asks, almost wonderingly. “Sorry. It has been a very long time since I last heard that one. Your mother used to… well. I believe you were going to town with your friends? Perhaps we can talk another time.”

“I’d like that,” Byleth says, and it isn’t even a lie. Still, she wants to be away from here; away from the stares and confusion in the eyes of those who thought—possibly until this very moment—that they knew anything about her. 

To that end, Luca drapes an arm around her shoulders. He leads her back down the aisle, past the incredulous stares of her students, and the scandalized glares of the knights. They’d forgive her, probably. Even Dimitri, whose expression is utterly unreadable as Byleth passes. 

She should probably care more about that. Right now, though, she can’t. She can only rely on the warmth of Luca’s arm and the squeeze of Leonie’s fingers as she leaves her father behind with strangers. 

  


**Author's Note:**

> Oh god, OK, so originally I was going to use Rhea's lullaby for this but the more I thought about it, the more I hated it. Subjectively, the English version of Rhea's lullaby is hideous. I haven't listened to the Japanese so IDK. It most likely works better, though.
> 
> "Deep in the Meadow" from the Hunger Games was the one that immediately sprung to mind for this situation, so I ran with it. Hope that didn't throw too many people. 
> 
> Also, also. I will probably follow this up with something about Luca. I don't think I'm going to leave this situation any time soon. SO MANY things happened all at once in the game, and I have Opinions about all of them.


End file.
